


Loose Ends

by tonysbruce



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Death, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, I'm Sorry, Pepper Potts Feels, Pepperony Week, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pregnancy, Rhodey Feels, although not really, they fix it but then there's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 00:12:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7459033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tonysbruce/pseuds/tonysbruce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Tony and Pepper find a way to fix it after the events of Civil War, he wants to marry her, and she needs to tell him they're going to be parents, but tragedy strikes before they can tie up all of their loose ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loose Ends

**Author's Note:**

> Pepperony Week day four; post-Civil War!
> 
> This was originally a very different fix-it fic, but then [Milene](http://peppeerpotts.tumblr.com) and I had a terrible idea (partially inspired by [this](http://letsgetdowney.tumblr.com/post/144778686608) post) to angst everyone instead, so I wrote this and she made a lovely companion gifset, which you can see [here](http://peppeerpotts.tumblr.com/post/147343065109/pepperony-week-day-four-post-cacw-in-which).
> 
> Basically I'm sorry, but if you know me, the Resident Angster-in-Chief, at all then you should definitely have expected this.

When Tony’s picture lights up the screen on Pepper’s phone, she almost doesn’t answer.

Not because she doesn’t want to—she does, all the time, after the couple grueling months they’d spent apart. She wants to hear his voice, make up for lost time, but she’s elbow-deep in paperwork and he’s on a mission, anyway.

She glances back at the phone when its shrill ring meets her ears again, and she remembers the last time he called her when he was on a mission and she didn’t answer.

She picks up the phone.

“Tony.”

“Pep.”

“Haven’t we discussed that calling me while you’re in the air is basically the equivalent of texting and driving, and how you shouldn’t do it?” she teases, even though she’d rather have him do anything but hang up.

“I’m bored.” His voice is short, clipped as always, but still like sweet honey to Pepper’s ears. “This is boring. In fact, I’m already doing this with my eyes closed, so I thought I’d see what other senses I could tune out and _still_ be able to blow these bots’ asses to bits—wait, shit, hold on—” A sharp gust of air, a blast, and then Tony’s voice is back. “Yep. Still got it. Anyway, what time you off tonight? Thought we could order in, talk about some stuff.”

“Stuff, huh?” Pepper’s voice is still light, curious, even if she’s slightly shaking her head. “Haven’t we done enough talking for at least another decade?”

“Ouch, babe, you wound me.” The air is still whooshing through the phone’s speaker, but Pepper can make out every one of Tony’s caustically teasing words, and a smile curls the corners of her mouth. “Usually you’re all about the talking thing.”

“Only when it’s not nonsensical babbling,” Pepper jokes, and she can almost feel Tony roll his eyes from the other end. “I just think we’re kind of talked-out about this by now.”

“Hmm. Maybe. Can’t hurt to reiterate it, though.”

“Someone’s turned over a new leaf,” Pepper says fondly, and she gives up on the paperwork when her eyes and mind begin to wander a little too far. She leans back in her chair, and puts all of her focus into the man on the phone line. “I just don’t want you to think we haven’t fixed this. Or at least made a lot of progress. We have, Tony. A _lot._ ”

He’s been jumpy since the falling out with Steve (well, it was more than a _falling out_ —so much more, but Pepper chooses give a much less daunting name). He’s tentative, guarded, so Pepper’s surprised they’ve even talked about it as much as they have. When he holds her at night, his arms are still stiff as iron like he’s afraid to let go just as he always has been, but now, it’s just so much _more._

She’s also figured out that a break did nothing but push them further apart, so she’s glad that they’ve fixed it, or at least come close. Made some progress. She doesn’t want to lose him, either. Not again.

“No. Yeah. I know.” Tony’s words break the few seconds of static silence, and by the dead air in the background, Pepper can tell he’s stopped to hang idle in the sky while he speaks. “Maybe that’s not what I want to talk about, though. You didn’t let me finish. Maybe I have a surprise.”

“Is that so?” Tony hums on the other end, and Pepper swivels in her chair a little bit. Her eyes land on her purse at the corner of her desk, and her thoughts settle on the folded-up picture of a sonogram wedged into one of the inside pockets. “Well, I just might have a surprise for you too.”

“ _Oh,”_ Tony almost purrs, and Pepper hears the gust of wind in the microphone as he jets off again. “Well. I guess I won’t keep you waiting then, Miss Potts.”

Pepper smiles warmly, and even if Tony can’t see it, she hopes he can hear it in her voice as she slides her palm over her middle and murmurs the next four words. “Hurry home, Mr. Stark.”

* * *

Tony never makes it home.

The clock in the corner of the TV screen reads 9:37 p.m., and for three and a half hours now, Pepper has been telling herself _he’s late, he’s just late._ The dinner she’d made for both of them is cold by now, and the candles burned out about an hour ago, so she’s sitting underneath a single ceiling lamp and trying to not freak out. _He’s just late,_ she tells herself again. _He’s late all the time. Stop worrying. It’s probably the hormones._

It’s 9:43 p.m. now, and Pepper hears a knock on the door.

FRIDAY usually notifies her when somebody is at the door, but tonight, the AI is silent. Pepper feels a wash of relief as she flies out of her chair and all but scampers to the apartment door, ready to jump into Tony’s waiting arms, because only one person would tell FRIDAY to zip it—it has to be him. It _has_ to be.

It isn’t.

“James?” She’s used to Rhodey showing up at all hours of the day and night, used to smiling and rolling her eyes and telling him _Tony’s just down in the shop_ or _he’s waiting for you at the bar._ In the past few years, she’s even become used to Rhodey showing up for her on occasion, holding his arm out for her as they leave for dinner or handing her a bottle of wine and a bag of popcorn. Tonight is one of those nights, minus the smiles and the laughs and the hugs, instead replaced by his boots planted firmly on the ground, hands in his pockets, and a hollow emptiness in his eyes.

Pepper is afraid to ask. Honestly, the sinking feeling in her gut tells her that she already knows. She asks anyway.

“What happened?”

Rhodey inhales deeply and appears to swallow a knot in his throat before he speaks. “It’s over, Pep,” he says, and the words feel like pinpricks to Pepper’s skin. “He didn’t make it.”

Her head starts spinning after the first half of his sentence, trying to find a way to convince herself that _over_ doesn’t mean _dead,_ that this isn’t happening, that it isn’t real. Rhodey is still talking, probably trying to explain, but she’s not hearing any of it around her twisted logic and denial that Tony would ever leave her like this.

She takes a shaky step back, and her back hits the cool wall behind her. She sinks down to the floor, and stays there.

* * *

Pepper has always hated funerals. This is the one she’s always dreaded the most, which is why it hurts so damn much that it doesn’t take long for it to get organized, and suddenly it’s happening, and she isn’t ready.

She isn’t ready to face anyone besides Rhodey. She isn’t ready to stand there, force a smile, and say “thank you” to the ever-repeated, ever-insincere “sorry for your loss.” She isn’t ready to think that a life without Tony is something she has to live, and she certainly isn’t read to raise his child alone.

Honestly, she isn’t even ready to get off the floor that morning. But she does.

It’s painful every step of the way, and by the time Pepper reaches the podium at the front of the funeral hall, she feels like she’s going to collapse. Her skin feels like its melting underneath the eyes in the audience, and she takes a minute to thank God or _something_ that this is private and not televised.

A few shuffles from the people before her make her realize that she’s been standing in silence for probably too long, and after a very forced yet vaguely encouraging smile from Rhodey, Pepper clears her throat.

“There’s a lot of things you all probably know about Tony,” she begins, and she wants to kick herself when her voice almost cracks. “But I don’t want to talk about any of that. I want to talk about the Tony I knew.”

Her eyes settle on the crumpled piece of paper on the podium in front of her, and she realizes that none of those planned words are ones she wants to say. There’s already ben article after article in magazine after magazine about Tony, his philanthropy, his life that the public thinks they knew. Those are all words that everyone’s heard before, words Pepper knows are stained with the image Tony quite literally killed himself trying to protect.

Words that aren’t even true.

Pepper lifts her gaze again and scans the room. She sees Rhodey and Happy first, the two who likely have the closest idea to what she’s thinking, and she almost considers just reading her scribbled script anyway because maybe all the others don’t _need_ to know the details. Then, her eyes flicker to the side where she spots the rest, the likes of Nat and Vision and Bruce who all claimed to be something like Tony’s friends; finally, she finds Steve and Wanda towards the back, and her blood boils. It reminds her of the fire that used to burn in her veins, and she decides that everyone, especially _them,_ deserve to know the Tony she knew, even if it twists whatever version of him they used to make themselves feel less guilty.

“He always his behind the whole ‘I am Iron Man’ thing,” Pepper starts again, and she narrowly avoids the urge to smile bitterly because she can practically hear Tony complaining about how she’s not doing a very good job of preserving his public persona even beyond the grave. “I think that was because people always made it out like Iron Man was just another, better version of Tony—one that was selfless, and heroic, and all of that. He probably thought that too, which is why he kept going back to it time after time even when he said he wanted to stop and settle down.” She hesitates when she feels a sharp pain in her middle at the thought of what could have been had they actually made it that far, but she recomposes and resolves to just not think about _that,_ not now. “But none of that is true. He didn’t stop being all of those things when he took off the suit. He just—he was _always_ those things, because he was always Tony first. Tony wasn’t Iron Man. Iron Man was just Tony.”

It shouldn’t be a shocking revelation, but Pepper is sure that some of the faces in the crowd are surprised. She doesn’t bother to look and find out, just because it still absolutely kills her to know that some of those people actually believed Tony’s public projections—that they just didn’t _care_ enough to try and see past it.

Those people didn’t deserve him. The world didn’t.

“The media painted him as some self-obsessed, unattainable, cold iron monger,” Pepper continues, slowly, since she’s not sure if she should allow those words to come out. “Those are all lies too. The truth… the truth is that he had such a big heart, and it was filled with so much love for those around him that there wasn’t any left over for himself.” Her eyes sting, and she feels her composure beginning to crumble as she grips the edges of the podium with shaky fingers. She suddenly feels like there isn’t enough air in the room, but she manages to find Rhodey’s gaze in the front row so she can get the next sentence out despite a trembling voice. “He had to count on us for that.”

* * *

It’s 9:45 p.m., and finally everyone is gone after the wake, leaving Pepper alone to her own devices in a home that’s too large, too dark, and too empty.

Honestly, it’s always been too large, but Tony’s ostentatious, larger-than-life persona seemed to make it less so. Made it less cold, more inviting. But every day up until now, exactly one week after his _departure,_ it’s just gotten emptier, colder, lonelier.

So has she.

Pepper inhales a slightly shaky breath and curls in on herself on the couch, not caring that there aren’t any lights on or that she still hasn’t changed out of the sleek black gown she’s been wearing all day. She wants to close her eyes and just let the exhaustion claim her, but every time she does, she just sees _him_ etched into the back of her eyelids and she just can’t handle any more of that, not now, maybe not ever. So she keeps her eyes open, staring at the black of the floor beneath her, and ignores the ticks of the clock in the background until the rhythm is disrupted by the familiar sound of a mechanical joint bending at the knee.

“That was a really nice speech you gave today.”

Pepper wants to kick herself for the split second that she hoped the sound of Rhodey’s prosthetics was actually the Iron Man suit, and that none of this is real. Instead, she just pulls up the effort from the rest of the day to put a smile on her face and turn it towards Rhodey as he sits down beside her. “Tony would have hated it.”

“Yep.” Rhodey makes a sound that’s vaguely close to a chuckle as he shakes his head and leans back into the sofa cushions. Pepper can make out the tiniest of smiles on his face in the darkness, and she recognizes the expression as the same bittersweet gesture she’s been using herself all day. “You pretty much just told the entire world that he was a huge softie and not even close to how cool he tried to make himself be. I can practically hear him bitching about it.”

Pepper hides a cringe at his words, not at the sentiment itself, but at his use of the past tense. She’d been hearing and even using it herself for the past week, but connecting the word _was_ to Tony still feels like a knife in her gut every time she has to do it. “Well, we couldn’t be the only ones who knew the truth,” she says, and Rhodey just nods in agreement. She can see that his careful, thick-skinned exterior is finally starting to deteriorate as he reaches for a bottle of whiskey that someone left sitting idle on the side table, and Pepper wants to offer him one of those shallow consolations that _we’re still here, at least we have each other._ However, she knows that those are just words that will never be enough to fill the hole that’s left inside both of them, so instead she just shakes her head as he offers her a drink.

“You sure? You look like you could use it,” Rhodey says, but Pepper just refuses again. Honestly, she could really use a good swig of heavy liquor right about now, but she can’t, not if she wants to preserve the one thing she still has left of Tony. “Alright. I’ll toast our bet on my own, then.”

Pepper listens to the sound of the drink hitting the bottom of the glass, and tries not to think too hard about the painful familiarity that rises in her as she looks incredulously over at Rhodey. “Your bet?”

Rhodey is mid-sip when she asks the question, and he raises his eyebrows for a second while he swallows. “Oh, yeah. The bet. We always had a bet on who would go first. Started way back in college, but it got more real once the whole Iron Man-slash-War Machine thing happened,” he explains, and Pepper can’t decide if she’s taken aback or if it’s something she saw coming. Rhodey clearly notices her confusion, and moves to amend it after another drink. “I mean—it was never anything _serious._ If anything, it made stuff… easier, I guess? We both chose these kinds of lifestyles for ourselves, we knew what we were getting into every time we took off. Tempting fate with a fake bet like that just made it… a little less scary to cope with.”

After the brief explanation, Pepper comes to the conclusion that she isn’t surprised at all. Everything was a competition to Tony, whether it was with himself, or with her, or with someone else—she knew that, however annoying it always was, it brought him solace in some form. She just didn’t expect it to go _this_ far.

“If it’s any consolation, which it probably isn’t,” Rhodey continues, “I never wanted him to win.”

Pepper feels something clench painfully in her chest as she looks over at Rhodey, takes in the slump of his shoulders, the stoic expression on his face. She can tell that he’s putting everything he has into holding it together just the same way she is, but that doesn’t make the pain any less obvious. “He wouldn’t have wanted you to win, either,” she says quietly, and she reaches over to set a hand on his knee even though he can’t feel it.

“I know.” Rhodey sighs and sets his hand on top of hers. “That selfless son of a bitch.”

The two of them fall silent again, and Pepper takes the lull in conversation to focus on her breathing again. Every day, every minute since it happened has left her feeling trapped underneath a cinderblock on her chest, and every breath hurts when she remembers that each one counts for another second she has to live in a world without Tony. Sometimes it gets to be too much, and her lungs seem to reject the air while something in her stomach clenches painfully, and she’s not sure that she’ll be able to make it back up to the surface. It’s happening again now as the dimly lit room seems to close in on her, and she can’t tell if she’s gasping because she can’t breathe or because she’s choking on another sob. It hurts, everything just fucking _hurts,_ and it’s so consuming that she barely notices as Rhodey’s arm slides around her back and tugs her closer to his side.

“Pepper, hey,” he says as he gently shakes her shoulder, and she hopes that he’s not going to ask if she’s fine. “Are you—?”

“No.” Pepper finally forces herself to spit out the truth. She’s been saying _yes, yes, yes_ all week when her mind just keeps screaming _no, no, no,_ because she’s not _okay,_ and doesn’t know how she’s ever going to be. “I’m not. I’m not _fine,_ because of him and his _stupid_ timing that just couldn’t be any worse, and it just—it sucks. His timing really sucks, James, it just _sucks._ ”

“Yeah. It does,” Rhodey agrees tiredly, and even though Pepper isn’t looking at him, she can feel as he deflates beside her.

“I hate all the loose ends,” Pepper mutters, clasping her hands in her lap in the hope that it’ll calm the shaking.

“Me too.”

“It all just feels like some kind of sick joke, you know?” Pepper continues once she has most of her breath back, but one glance in Rhodey’s direction confirms that no, he really doesn’t know. And he wouldn’t, she supposes, because one of the lessons she’s learned in all of her years with Tony is how to keep things locked away and hidden for no one else to find. She never intended for _this_ to be one of those things, at least not until after she told Tony. Unfortunately, she never got the chance. “After… everything, all that stuff with the break and the Accords, we were finally just starting to… fix it. We wanted each other back again, and then I talked to him before _it_ happened, and he said he had a surprise or something, and I said that I had one too and I don’t know how any of that would have went down but—but I really think it could have been the start of something good.” She pauses, swallows a knot in her throat, and looks back across the room. “And then he had to go and _die._ ”

She’s at the point now where she’s torn between devastation and anger, which really isn’t a winning combination given the circumstances, but she’s given up on trying to control the emotions running haywire through her mind at this point.

Rhodey’s grip tightens on her shoulder for a second, and Pepper realizes that he probably does understand, more than anyone else could. Tony was all either of them had left, especially lately, and Pepper always knew that when he wasn’t trying to fic what was broken between them, he was at Rhodey’s side, trying to fix what was left of his best friend.

God, he really was one selfless son of a bitch.

“I get what you mean,” Rhodey confirms after another beat of hesitation. Of course he does. Pepper turns her head to look at him, hoping that maybe they can find a way to get past this together somehow, but she isn’t sure what to think when she’s met with an expression that’s halfway between pensive and uncertain. “I’m not sure if you want to know,” he begins again, and the words themselves coupled with his slow and careful tone make Pepper already start to second guess whatever he’s about to say next. “It makes sense if you don’t, but I don’t know, it might help give you some… closure, or something.” He pauses, and she looks at him expectantly until he meets her gaze. “I know what his, uh, surprise was.”

Pepper barely has to consider it for a second before she decides that, whatever it was, it couldn’t possibly make this any worse. “What?”

The corner of Rhodey’s mouth twitches, ending up somewhere decidedly close to a rueful smile. “He was gonna ask you to marry him.”

Or she _thought_ it couldn’t get any worse.

For just a fleeting moment, she almost starts succumb to that sinking feeling again, the one where there’s too many tons of water bearing down on her chest and she can’t seem to catch her breath. The knowledge feels like it’s the cement block tied to her ankle that’s pulling her even further into the abyss, but what’s killing her the most between her shallow breaths is that she can’t figure out _why._

They had fixed things, or were at least getting there. Tony wanted to _marry her._ If that didn’t mean they were back on track, that he wanted to try, she didn’t know what did.

Maybe she should have told him sooner. Maybe then things could have been okay.

“Pepper?” Rhodey’s voice pulls her back to the present, and when she moves a hand to brush her hair back out of her face she notices that her cheeks are wet. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“No. No, you should have.” She hates how much her voice is trembling, and she shakes her head a little to try and dispel whatever had just come over her. She still can’t figure out what it is. “It’s—it’s good. Closure, right? Knowing that makes it…” She doesn’t want to say ‘easier,’ because having the constant reminder of what could have been will never be easy, but there isn’t quite another word for it. “… easier. I guess if he wanted that then maybe he wanted everything else too.”

“Everything else?” Rhodey asks, carefully, as if he’s trying to preserve both of them from any more unneeded pain.

“James…” Pepper sighs, wipes her cheeks, and turns to him with a bittersweet smile on her lips. “I’m pregnant.”

Saying it out loud for the first time isn’t at all how she’d imagined it. She didn’t imagine the dull, arid darkness of the room, the tears, and certainly not the circumstances. She didn’t imagine that Rhodey would be the first to know, but most of all, she didn’t imagine how much finally admitting it would hurt like hell.

Rhodey’s quiet for another several moments, his eyes wide and mouth caught somewhere between a smile and a gape, and Pepper can’t help but draw a comparison to how similar Tony’s reaction probably, hopefully, would have been. “Oh my god,” he breathes, his eyes dropping to her middle until they rise to meet her gaze again. “Oh my god, Pep.” She’s not sure if the phrase is meant as pity or joy, but the favor tips towards the latter when Rhodey pulls her into a hug and squeezes her tight.

Pepper wraps her arms around his back and squeezes him return, and for the first time that week, she feels a little bit closer to okay. Rhodey hasn’t let go of her yet, but she’s fine with that, because he’s warm and he’s _there_ and he doesn’t have to say it for her to know that he’s _in this_ with her—it’s all he has left of Tony too, after all, and when Pepper hears him inhale a shaky breath against her shoulder, she’s positive that somehow, come hell or high water, they’ll find a way to get through it.

“This would have made him so happy.” Rhodey’s voice is just as unsteady as his breaths, but Pepper is no better when he lifts his head from her shoulder to look at her with watery eyes and a wistful smile. “That’s all I ever wanted for him.”

* * *

Five months later and two weeks early, at precisely 9:45 p.m., Pepper gives birth to a son.

Rhodey is by her side the entire time, just like he has been since the day both of their lives took another turn for the worse. She wants to hate herself when she wishes that his hand is Tony’s when it grips tightly to her own, but all of that fades when she takes her son into her arms and looks down into a pair of inky brown eyes she’d thought she’d seen the last of all those months ago.

She smiles tearfully, and names him Anthony.


End file.
